


reprise by night

by eulyhne_syios



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Drunken Kissing, Kissing, M/M, Memories, could-have-beens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-08 06:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13452546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eulyhne_syios/pseuds/eulyhne_syios
Summary: Fifteen years later, Elio and Oliver meet up for drinks. Time and time again their paths cross, converging in brief, but passionate grasps for what they once had, playing and replaying at reprise by night.orIn the wee hours when neither can sleep, Timothee and Armie play at what could’ve been in the last twenty pages, on the last few days before filming ends.





	1. first reprise

**Author's Note:**

> title is partially from ‘By Night’ By Sophie Hutchings.

**i. 2 am: hotel, after drinks**

He doesn’t tell anyone this, but he doesn’t want to think it would end with his face towards the fire, catching the light in the damp corners of his eyes. Mulling it over and over again, soon he wonders, just numbly wonders — _is it a video, is it a video, is it a video?_ It’s hard to comprehend fully, the weight of it —he can understand ‘ _I have touched you for the last time’_ , but love…?

  
_I have loved you for the last time_

  
He doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t think he can. How do you decide when you have loved someone for the last time? How do you know when it’s time to gather up all of them that you’ve saved up, drop them in a bottle and cast it far out into sea? How do you know that the bottle won’t ironically get swept back to your shore again, every last morsel preserved perfectly, not a drop of saltwater smearing the contents? You find everything where it was last left, and suddenly the last time doesn’t feel like the last at all.

  
You want to start over again, and if you can’t, you want to hold onto it. You pick up the bottle and run home and keep it somewhere you will always remember, and where no one will find it to tell you to throw it away. If something you cast out to sea returns to you, what can you do but clutch onto it, never letting go, being unable to imagine what you were thinking when you cast it in the first place.

  
_That’s what I’m doing,_ he thinks. _I can’t let go._ He shakes his head. _No, I don’t want to let go_. That’s what he’s thinking when the two of them are stumbling in the dark stairway, having drunkenly gone past the elevators, laughing, murmuring musings of nonsense. Though the railing barely keeps their swaying frames from folding in like beach chairs, he grips the taller man’s sweaty wrist with an urgency you could easily mistake for steadiness. _God, don’t tell me you’re staying in the top floor._ He turns around, laughs. _No. Just on the roof._

  
One of their feet hits a ledge and they crash in a crescendo of shouts and grimaces, angles digging into their bodies from both sides, the hard edges of the steps in their backs and calves, their own elbows and knees jabbing torsos and thighs. But the alcohol is just enough to cushion the fall and the pain is numbed, rolling away into the crevices in the walls. Soon they’re just sighing, and then, just breathing, and soon all he can register is the familiar warmth and smell of his lover beneath him, light of his eyes, light of his life and he can barely bear just hanging there, arms holding himself in suspension, their lips just out of reach.

  
He reminds himself that the man beneath him is married, has been married for what now feels like an ocean of time. There’s no way for him to win back those years, all he can do is trace at the gentle havoc they’ve wrought upon his skin, running his fingers over the sunspots along his forearms he knows are there, albeit in the dark. He feels envious then. Envious of all the things that get to chip and scratch at his lover’s flesh, possess him time and time again without care. So time, the Sun and all those wretched textbooks and term papers get to nick his fingertips, take a few drops of his blood with them and all he gets to have are moments, gasps and clawing at the darkness.

  
And they don’t do for him anymore. There’s no way he can go through this life on just those three things alone, mere shadows of what he’d once hoped for. He never thought of the summer as a bargain —a taste of _this_ before the inevitable _that_ which would bring their fevered waltz in the streets to an end. Seemingly. Seemingly, he repeats because his mind is sloshing amidst the sour, bitter muck of amber once swirling in glasses, struggling for a little more, always just a little more, of this.

  
So this time _he’s_ the one who asks:

  
“Can I kiss you?”

  
A hand comes to rest over his temple, fingers just meeting his hairline, holding him just as gently as it had that summer, in his bed, with his French windows open, moonlight washing over their flushed faces.

  
“Will it be enough?”

  
The softness in his voice is almost unbearable.

  
“No.”

  
He can almost feel the small, wistful smile returned to him.

  
“Then kiss me until it’s enough.”

  
Silence.

  
He could snort from the absurdity of it. And then almost cries from the same.

  
“I’d end up kissing you forever. Eventually I’d be kissing your corpse and then just the mound of your ashes.”

  
Warm laughter wells from below.

  
“Like I’ve said before. Sick and very, very sad.”

  
“Oh?” He grins, leaning down and pinching the man’s chin. “-and _who_ was the one who _ate_ the—

  
“-For the record, I did it out of envy.” The blonde murmurs against the space behind his ear, weaving his fingers through his summer love’s dark locks.

  
Then he pulls him down until he could kiss his neck, unable to leave only one once he started. Every ghostly trace of his lips leaves a whirlpool of ruin in its wake, until the other can’t take it anymore and grasps his face, and when they kiss, a spell is broken, the end is suspended and time runs, but it runs away from them, leaving them in a pocket of temporal stillness, though hands still roam and mouths still veer over miles and miles.

  
“Envy?” He breathes once they’ve broke apart. “-I can’t imagine you envying anyone.”

  
“What sort of Oliver do you have tucked in that mind of yours?” His low voice chuckles. “-and to whom does he owe for all this —poise and nonchalance?”

  
“Is the real Oliver not like this?”

  
“God, no.”

  
He wants to say more, but the words have eluded him, he can’t think past what his tongue just barely clambered over _poise and nonchalance_ , so he laughs, he just laughs and soon the bright, comforting clarion of their voices reverberating over one another is enough to fill in the gaps.

  
Eventually they realize they’re still stuck on the stairs. Someone sighs.

  
“You’re not _really_ staying on the roof, are you…?”

  
“No. I’m on second. Come on, we’re practically there.”

  
“I can barely feel my legs…” He shakes the younger man’s hands off his arm. “-no, seriously, if I stand up my ankles’ll snap like candy cigarettes—

  
“Are you really gonna make me haul your ass up half a flight of stairs?”

  
“Can you go up backwards?”

  
He snorted.

  
“Can I go up backwards? Oliver, when I’m sober I can go up on my _hands_ alone.”

 

Grinning even more when he hears a hum of amusement, he places one hand under either of the other man’s arms and begins to drag him up the last several steps, delighting in the clap of his loafers knocking against ones below, followed by poorly hidden murmurs of discomfort. Soon his arms cramp under the weight and his grip sags and a boom follows when the man’s behind hits a riser with a shout of pain.

  
“Was that out of malice or did you genuinely _accidentally_ slam my bum into the stairwell…?”

  
“Well, you’re not exactly the lightest thing I’ve ever carried...”

  
“Just mind the contents.” He sighs, makes a flashing gesture with his hands. “- _fragile_.”

  
“Sure.”

  
When they’ve reached the hall, he seems to have miraculously regained his walking ability, well, _stumbling_ ability more like, and together they zigzag lazily towards the suite door, leaning into walls for support, stealing a few more kisses and snatches of each other’s skin and clothes before they’ve reached their stop. The taller man raises his eyebrows.

  
“1983.”

  
“This used to be the first floor. They changed it to the lobby.”

  
“If only years _were_ rooms you could live in…”

  
“This one is.” His dark-haired lover winks. “-just for tonight.”

  
It takes a few tries to get the door open and a dizzying, half-numbed heave to get it open fully after it jams a quarter the way, but when it swung back with a thud, they can’t wait anymore. He’s glad he didn’t wear anything too complicated today. No crazy buttons, no silly zippers in odd places. Clothes slide off him, come apart in the blonde’s hands like the way his body yielded, would’ve yielded that summer if he had let it, like butter, like water through your fingers. He doesn’t even hear his clothes hit the ground.

  
Soon he realizes he’s feeling more skin than shirt, but feeling is not enough, he grasps what feels like the flesh of sun-drenched shoulders, tries to kiss every place he can reach, imagines his body is a map and that every spot his lips land on is a city he’ll never be able to visit again. Sometimes he goes over the same spot twice, three times. He wants to fabricate a blueprint of him, of his favourite places. He wants to remember until he won’t need photographs anymore.

  
The large hands smoothing the back of his neck tell him to slow down. _It’s okay, we have all night_. But he doesn’t have all night. He thinks back to San Clemente. _Tomorrow is today. Soon all our tomorrows will be yesterdays._

  
The uneven wall is making his back hurt. They do a funny little slow dance to the bed. But he’s reluctant to crawl in. He doesn’t like the idea of it being their final destination. So what if tomorrow is today? Don’t they still have time? Miles and miles to go before they fall asleep?

  
His other half is clearly swamped and sinks into the mound of blankets like it’s nothing, on his stomach, just the way he had the first day they met. He breathes in deeply. _Can he smell me?_ the other wonders. _Is he smiling because he remembers the way I smelled? Do I still smell like that, fifteen years later? Or is he smiling just because he remembers?  
_

 

_Is remembering enough for him?_

 

He knows it will never be enough for him, but for Oliver he’s not so sure. There are only rare instances when he’s sure they‘re thinking the same way. But then he wonders if he would really be happier if they always did. Was there any fun in that?

 

The other man still stirs, blinking his eyes apologetically, glancing at him and then over himself, their bodies, vacant yet wanting. He shrugs, falling back and curling up beside him. They’d been grabbing at each other so much before, now they were worn out, no, not worn out, not exactly. Maybe a little afraid. If all their want transpires into one more shot at love under the covers, what more will there be afterwards? If they can delay the final act over and over again, maybe they can stop this from ending, maybe their time together will never really be over. Maybe they can have their own requiem for a dream.

  
He brushes a few blonde hairs away from his love’s eyes. He notices that his lashes are a slightly darker shade. _Remember that._ He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to remember so he’ll try to remember everything. Remember that there’s a stretch of skin below his jaw that doesn’t get as much sun, so it’s lighter than his face, like the stretch of sand they would go for runs on, almost every morning. Remember the way the sun would strike the tips of his hair before it even rose from the sea. Remember the way you could feel he was smiling just from the way he changed his breath.

  
“Does it make you happy?” He’s repeating everything Oliver has ever said to him now, he doesn’t want to forget any of it.

  
“What does?”

  
“Your parallel life, my coma.”

  
He doesn’t look at him, tries to shift his head so his hair covers his eyes again.

  
“No. Why are you asking me this? Do you enjoy being cruel?”

  
“Are you afraid of being happy?”

  
“That has nothing to do with it.”

  
“No, it has everything and nothing to do with it.” He’s turned into a mouthpiece for other people’s words, their greatest hits. 

  
“You’re not making any sense.”

  
“You love me, and you’re unhappy. You make even less sense.”

  
“Elio, I don’t think I’ll ever be happy. I don’t think that’s how life works.”

  
“So you’re okay with this? You’re going to be like this, until what? Until you’re dead? Until the Sun swallows the Earth?”

  
“Elio-

  
“-I want your heart when you’re dead—

  
“Elio—

  
“-I don’t care how messed up it sounds —if I can’t have it now, I want it when you’re dead...”

  
“Hey, hey it’s okay. You can have it. I’ll give to you. I promise.” He tries make it up to him, giving him that grin of his that rivalled the sun, wiping his tears with a sandy thumb. “-I’ll write it in my will. I’ll make sure to pledge it to you.”

  
“The Earth shouldn’t get to have you. What has it ever offered you anyway?”

  
“The greatest thing I could have ever had in my life.”

  
“Could. It’s always ‘could’ with you.”

  
He tries to smile back, but the watery snot is getting into his mouth, so he has to wipe it away, but before he can, the other man leans in, licking it off.

  
“Doesn’t it taste gross?”

  
“It’s just saltwater.” He shrugs, still grinning with lidded eyes. “-I love the ocean, now. I never had any particular thoughts about it other than the usual tourist wonderment, but now whenever I think of it, I think of you.”

  
“You’ll love the things that remind you of me?”

  
He looks down, blushing.

  
“I’ll try.”

  
They lace their fingers together before they fall asleep. Outside, the sky resembles the colour of violet noise, while the air feels stagnant, devoid of vehicles in their usual rush and hush through the winding lamp lit streets. When his eyes are closed, it’s almost as if they’re back again, in his summer room, _their_ summer room and he runs it through his mind over and over again, hoping he would reach it in his dreams.

 

  
**intermission: 6 am, hotel bathroom**

Timothée wakes up with a raging migraine. He squints, brushing out sleepsand from his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. The curtains weren’t drawn completely, he can tell it’s almost light now, maybe in half an hour the sky will be blue again. He glances at Armie, smirking softly. Still sound asleep. He peels back the covers just enough for him to swing his own legs out, so most of the warmth still stayed within. He’d hate for Armie to catch a cold because of him.

  
Staggering into the bathroom in bare feet, the ice cold tiles make him wince, waking him a bit more. He shuts the door behind him, turns on the light.

  
His hair is all over the place, there’s odd yellow patches under the usual purplish spots under his eyes. He blinks again, picks out stray lashes that fell into his corneas. He should shower. Finding towels neatly folded below the cupboards, he takes one, hangs it over the steel bar by the tub and grabs the tiny bottles of citrus shampoo and conditioner.

  
When the water hits his skin he shrinks back —it’s too cold and he breathes between his teeth, hugging his shoulders until the rivulets warm up. He lets the water drench his hair, unravel his curls and roll over his back. For a while, he just stands there.

 

He watches the water splatter around his feet, stares at his toes, looks at the way they were always slightly red around the edges, as if they were always cold. Did Armie’s feet look like this too? He never spent much time looking at them. Now that he thought about it, he never spent much time looking at his hands either.

  
There are parts of Elio that he envies. No matter how close he got to him when he had him inside his head, there would always be parts of him he couldn’t understand, couldn’t express, and it made him wonder if it was an issue of experience or something deeper. Was this something Luca had inadvertently given to him? He always knew when to pull the camera back, when to shift it away before revealing too much.

  
Timothée thinks back to all the scenes he’s done and starts to wonder if he could have done more, given more and tries not to let it bother him too much. It’s what all actors think about at some point. Filming was going to be over soon. He needed to shed the skin he’d been in for the last 30 something days, go back to his own.

  
But it’s not as easy as his other roles. The skin doesn’t wash off in the shower. It clings.

  
It leaves him feeling a little sick. Switching off the shower, he sinks down, flips up the toilet lid just before he empties last night’s musty contents. A couple threads of saliva hang from his lips. He tears off a strip of toilet paper and wipes it off, flushing, watching the mixture disappear down below.

  
He turns the shower back on, skips the shampoo to go straight for the conditioner, doesn’t think about anything as he scrubs at his roots. Doesn’t let the scent of citrus remind him of anything but bland, distant things.

  
When he steps out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, Armie’s back is to him, standing outside by the balcony railing. He’s changed back to his own clothes now, slipped a hoodie over his shirt. It’s chilly, this early in the morning.

 

Timothée walks over to the bed. Smiling down at Oliver’s billowy shirt lain over the covers, he slides his arms through it, rolling down the sleeves, bringing his hands to his nose. At least he should remember the smell.

 

Teetering from one leg onto another, he gets back into his loose jeans and joins Armie outside.

 

He isn’t Elio now (and _he_ definitely wasn’t Oliver anymore), so he’s not quite sure how to settle in. The morning after always brought new qualms. How should he act now?

  
He decides to stand alongside him, match the way he leaned his 6’5 frame over the railing, resting his hand just a finger’s width away from his. He shifts his head, soft wind drying his damp hair and watches the other’s face, the distant eyes.

  
“I’m really gonna miss this place.”

  
“Yeah.” Timmy agreed, one corner of his lips turned. “-a home away from home.”

  
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite like this.”

  
“Me neither. I don’t know, maybe my teen years kinda sucked.” He laughed. “-but I’ve never really had a summer love. Not really.”

  
“No. No, me neither. Whatever happened to us at seventeen, right?”

  
“For me, I think I just didn’t really have the time to let go like this, you know? Too many auditions for the talent show, going back and forth for Homelands…I guess I just sort of missed out on some quintessential teen experiences, haha.”

  
“I don’t think I even knew what I wanted at seventeen.” Armie shook his head. “-you’re lucky. You’ve set yourself on a path and you’re sure of it.”

  
They look out to the streets, at the town that slept on. Soon the fruit markets would be setting up shop again. Soon the bookstore would be open.

  
Timothée turns over to him again.

  
“You were really good. Not just last night. You were really good, this whole time.”

  
Armie smiles at him, and this time it’s different because it’s not Oliver anymore, not Oliver smiling at Elio. It’s Armie smiling at him. And it startles him, startles him how he feels different now that he knows the smile is really for him.

  
_I have loved you for the last time_

  
Is it really the last time?

  
“You were really good too. I think you were better than me.”

  
Timothée can’t help but grin at that and nudge into his shoulder with his own and bury his face into his arm. He hopes his crazy hair hides the blush on his cheeks. He wonders if Armie can feel the warmth of them through his sleeve.

  
“I’m going to miss you.” He finds himself saying.

  
Life was no cassette tape. There was no way he could take those words back now.

  
“You can come visit anytime. L.A’s really not that far, not with all the planes now anyways.”

  
“Yeah, thank God for aerial transportation.” He laughs. “-but that’s not what I meant.”

  
“I know. I’m going to miss you too.”

  
“I had fun. Last night was nice.”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“Do you think Luca knows?”

  
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.”

  
“Let’s do it again.” Timothée turns to him, eyes serious now. “-tomorrow night let’s do another could-have-been. I think it’ll help with our acting.”

  
Armie faces him, the look in his eyes telling him he knows it’s not just about acting. They couldn’t seem to hide anything from each other, not anymore. But he just smiles, if a touch devious.

  
“Sure. Let’s do it again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at this point all I know is that I have a lot for feelings for both Elio/Oliver and Timothee/Armie 
> 
> Btw, to all the ao3 writers writing Timmy/Armie RPF, god bless bc your fics keep me alive :) here’s to hoping the two of them (and the rest of those who made the film) get the Oscars they deserve :)))


	2. second reprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so Elio and Oliver have a little something on the train... ;)

**ii. 10 pm, train leaving**

He closes his eyes and he’s back again. He remembers asking him at the hotel bar, three years ago _Would you do it again if you could?_ Remembers not being ready for his answer, the way you could never be ready to hear how someone close to you just died, scouring your mind for how the hell you could have only heard of it now, instead of _being_ there, where you should have been.

 

_In a second. I would do it again, in a second. In an instant, I’m twenty four again and it’s as if we’d never parted_

 

Oliver and his irreverent bluntness could cut him down to stumps if he let it. Why did words feel like this, whistling around his mind like hailstones, making him unable to sleep at night? In his mind, Oliver’s voice is more sonorous, yet every word feels detached as if they are moving through the vacuum of space, one letter at a time. So that his entire string of sentences takes a hundred light years to reach him.

 

You age more when you’re staying still. He thinks about that, sitting in the train by the window, wonders how long he’d have to sit here, unmoving, until he and Oliver became the same age. Oliver was always on the move, all the more so in those summer days, he could almost hear his blustery voice right now — _Come on, let’s go swimming together. I’ve got to pick something up —come on, let’s go together._ Together, together, together. He always wanted to do things together. Maybe he’d been afraid of being lonely even then. He’d never learned how to live with it.

 

So if Oliver was always moving, maybe he was always aging slower than him. Then maybe somewhere, in some distant point in time, their ages would meet up with each other, even when their bodies couldn’t. He was always thinking of ways they would stay tethered to each other. Their stars of David. Their Jewishness. Their love of books, of old, classical things. _Til death do us part._ What a silly line. To think that something as measly as death could truly separate you from someone. As if they were only a body that grew and then crumbled to dust between God’s fingertips.

 

He closes his eyes and he’s seventeen again. He’s wearing Oliver’s billowy shirt and clutching his back with that final farewell that never should have been final. When the taller man lets go first, he only clings tighter, and he can’t see his face, but he knows Oliver is smiling, can feel it from the way the air moves from his throat to his lips. He realizes again that he loves him, when he hopes that soft simper was something he saved only for him.

 

_We wasted so many days._

 

He still thinks so. Maybe if he’d looked harder in those first few days he could’ve been sure Oliver liked him too, he should’ve peered closer at the details, held a magnifying glass at the fine print. Was the way he touched his arm during that volleyball game the way all men touched each other’s arms on any given day? Were they always that open? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anymore.

 

_I should have gone with him. I should have gotten on that stupid train._

 

He remembers wanting one more night with him, always wanting one more night. He remembers when he used to get anxious if the night would go well or end badly and he feels different about it now, he’s too old to afford worrying about all these little things, pocket-change anxieties, he calls them. He wants them, he wants them all, good nights, bad nights, horrible nights as long as it meant that he could be with him again.

 

The turkey club sandwich lies by the window ledge, half-finished. He couldn’t stand all the layers of deli meat, it had too much salt and the tomatoes made the whole bread soggy, the juice getting all over his fingers. What he wants to do is open a nice old bottle of wine and drink just enough so he can trick himself into believing the past is the present.

 

_Tomorrow is today. Tomorrow is_ ~~_today._~~ _Tomorrow_ ~~_is today._~~ ~~ _Tomorrow_ _is today._~~

 

_Yesterday is today._

 

He thinks about Orwell. _1984._ Thinks about how Winston was able to believe that 2+2 = 5 because the Party willed him into it. What kind of Party would he need to will him into believing that yesterday is today? What part of his brain would they have to tamper with or even lesion to have him believe? He wants to believe. But the more he wants to believe the more he knows he’ll never be able to.

 

He needs some air. Rising from his seat, he heads towards the back of the train, towards the tiny balcony-like area where you could see everything you were leaving. He doesn’t need to see all of that to know what he’s left, to know the most important things he’s left, but he wants to go there anyway, wants to feel the northern wind on his face, and let the cold make him forget.

 

He passes by the other passengers without looking at them. Only catching glimpses of them, they’re flattened down to shapes and colours and it’s as if he’s moving through a painting, a Renoir, or maybe a Degas, with darker tones, sharper edges. Renoir used so much red and yellow and white, his world was so full of light. He smiles to himself, imagining him painting a series of Olivers, in each one of his bathing suits. Or maybe just a nice, warm bedroom shot, with all of his colourful clothing thrown and hung around the space, like an installation of sorts. _The Deconstruction of the Other Through Their Garments, circa July 1983._

 

There’s a smirk on his face but he tries to avoid laughing because he had drank earlier and it usually led to crying. The train is getting colder now, and he can feel the rattle beneath the carpet, once a mere thrumming, now sending jolts to his heels. He’s getting close, he knows. Someone pushes past him to squeeze into a restroom. He shook his head. Train toilets are terrible. Well, all public washrooms were terrible in their own ways, but train toilets were the worst —they were small, tight and when the train shook, so did the contents, getting all over your pants.

 

He wonders how many times Oliver has gotten his piss all over his pants from train toilets. Does Oliver still travel by train? Or did he only fly now? He smiles. Plane toilets are terrible too.

 

There. He’s made it. Resting a reddened hand on the rusty handle, he yanks with all his might but the force of the wind is strong and he has to use both arms and even the power in his hips to drive the iron door apart.

 

It’s dark out, and most of the stars are hidden behind clouds, so he doesn’t see him at first.

 

By the time he’s leaning against the railing, hands gripping the freezing bar beneath, he senses another presence, the smell of cologne, a notion of cashmere and pressed pants.

 

He tries to say his name, but no sound comes out. The first voice is not his.

 

“Elio.”

 

He knows it’s him, but he turns anyway. Like pinching yourself to make sure you aren’t dreaming.

 

“How did you know?”

 

“You take this train every summer. To visit our place. I knew I’d run into you eventually.”

 

“No, I mean, how did you know it was me?”

 

He feels Oliver’s smile in the darkness.

 

“Really, Elio?” But his tone of voice says he’s okay with playing this game. “-I’d think we’d know each other well enough to discern our silhouettes _nella notte_.”

 

_I’d know it’s you if I were blindfolded_ , but he decides to save it. He does this now, saving words for the right time, as if he’s on a ration.

 

“You came for me?”

 

“Wouldn’t you?” Oliver pauses. “-you know, you really should come visit. I think my sons are getting tired of hearing me ramble about you over the dinner table.”

 

“You tell them about me?”

 

“All the time.” He laughs. “-and you’re never there —they’re starting to think you’re some kind of ghost or something.”

 

_Maybe that’s what I am, to you. Maybe that’s what we are now._

 

“I don’t think visiting is a good idea.”

 

“You never do.” He grumbles, rolling his eyes. “-is it my wife? Are you scared of her? She has no idea what happened between us.”

 

_What happened between us._ So what they had was just a ‘happening’ now. Spur-of-the-moment, slapdash, noncommittal —trivial, even. He has to stop this, stop analyzing each one of Oliver’s words. Oliver was Oliver —he couldn’t change the way he talked if he was held at gunpoint at the bottom of the ocean.

 

“I’m not scared of anyone. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

 

“You sure like lying to yourself, Elio.”

 

“Oliver—

 

“-Are you _punishing_ me for something?”

 

“What would I punish you for, Oliver?” He laughs again, but cold and empty. “-I mean, it’s not like you _lied_ to me or anything—

 

“-Jesus Christ, Elio, I’m sorry, okay? Look, whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry. I was happy for a while. Weren’t you?”

 

He lets out a frustrated sigh, doesn’t say anything. Just ignores him for a while, stares out into the diminishing trees. For some time, neither says a word.

 

Then Oliver sighs again, quieter this time.

 

“Yes. I was. Happy, too. Does that make it better or worse?”

 

“Neither. Words are just words, Oliver. They can’t do anything by themselves.”

 

With that, Oliver grabs his wrist and drags him back inside the train and shuts them inside the nearest restroom. Someone went recently and it showed. Both of them immediately cover their noses.

 

“What do you _want_ —?” Oliver hissed, his slightly queasy expression betraying him for a few seconds. He talks without using his nose and it sounds ridiculous.

 

“Honestly? —please just get us out of here.” He managed. There were a million better things he could’ve said, that could’ve either made Oliver go cold or hot in the face, but they were all lost on him now. God, what had this person _ate_ …?

 

“Roger that.” He undid the latch and the fresh artificial air of the train comes in like a miracle. “-my bunk’s not too far from here. Let’s go.”

 

Before he has time to protest, he’s getting dragged again, through train-car after train-car until they arrive at Oliver’s.

 

It’s smaller than what he’s used to, but still, he’s found a way to make himself at home. He grins at the unbalanced stack of books piled around his bed like a makeshift fortress, with spare pages hanging out in odd places, likely half-read essays, unfinished exams. A balled-up shirt there, a pair of rumpled jeans there. Explosions of short shorts in sporadic succession like a cobblestone trail leading to his pillow —of which is ironically perfectly fluffed out. The man loved to sleep. Figures.

 

“You sleep here?”

 

“Oh, yeah.” He nodded. “-it’s also where I practice jiu jitsu and tell fortunes for two dozen bucks an hour.”

 

He raises his eyebrows.

 

“And when I’m feeling _really_ adventurous, I try to skydive from the top bunk.”

 

When he finally lets out a tiny snort, Oliver knows he’s won this one.

 

“So,” The taller man says, launching himself backwards into his bunk, landing with the mattress shuddering, and a bunch of books flowing to the floor. He gestures for him to join him. “-what were you up to before you ran into me?”

 

“Nothing much.” He shrugged, settling beside him. The bed was uncomfortably warm and smelled too much like him. “-just eating a sandwich.”

 

“Oh? Should I be jealous of said sandwich?”

 

He laughs when he’s smacked on the shoulder.

 

“I don’t think you should. I mean, we really only went halfway.”

 

“Mm.”

 

He meant for it to be a joke, but it doesn’t seem to have carried through. Oliver is quiet for a second. _Is he thinking about who I’ve slept with since him? Should he be thinking about these things so freely?_ He doesn’t like the fact that _he_ has a clearer idea of who Oliver’s slept with since him. At least one of them.

 

“Do you miss it? When we were together like that? Did you find some who were better than I was?”

 

“Of course I did.” He laughs a little. “-but just because they were better didn’t mean it was better. Didn’t mean I was happier.”

 

He noticed they’ve kicked off their shoes. They’re in sock feet now. He begins to run the ball of his left foot over Oliver’s toes.

 

“Do you remember when we used to do this thing underneath the dinner table?”

 

“Of course.” He turned to him, smiling. It’s sadder, now. “-Elio, I remember everything.”

 

“But you can’t remember everything.” He’s grinning though. “-you can’t remember what you never saw.”

 

He sees Oliver’s furrowed brow and wants to laugh.

 

“When you were away at one of your poker games.” He brings his mouth close to his ear. “-I went into your room, took off my pants and put on your swimsuit, the red one. I thought that was the closest I was ever going to get to you.”

 

He can tell Oliver’s trying to constrain himself, he sees the blush that’s started to bloom across his cheeks and the tips of his ears. It made him look so young, like a schoolboy. His breathing is thinner now. So he goes on.

 

“Then, on a different day.” He murmurs. “-I found your suit again and crawled onto your bed. I was already half-hard by then, I was so young. I pulled it over my face and breathed. You were already inside me before we ever slept together, Oliver.”

 

He looks over and the other man has his face in his hands. It’s too much. He’s pushed his knees together, it clearly had the intended effect.

 

“Do you enjoy being cruel?”

 

“If it serves a purpose.”

 

“And what’s yours this time? Making me lose myself over you all over again?” He sighs. “-you know I’m honestly defenseless against you.”

 

“You held back longer than I did.”

 

“I was waiting. God, I was such a coward back then.”

 

He reaches a hand, thumbing the base of Oliver’s tanned neck. Remembering the way he had done it as he was icing his nosebleed while the other man had been kneading his foot. Quite affectionately, at that. No one else had ever kissed his foot after that. Not like that.

 

“You know I miss your massaging.”

 

“Huh. And what part of you misses it the most?”

 

“My groin.”

 

He gets an elbow in the ribs, a laugh.

 

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop being horny.” He admits, with mock concern. “-it’s a skill, really.”

 

“Honestly, that’s true. Some men would kill to be in your position.”

 

“Meanwhile, I’m just killing to be _in_ a position…”

 

“Good grief, Elio.” He’s laughing really hard now. “-you never quit, do you?”

 

“Nope. Later.” He pushes off the bed, starts to head back to his window seat.

 

“Hey —where you going?”

 

“Back to my sandwich. Maybe he and I can find a nice time in a restroom that smells better than the one you dragged us in.”

 

He can barely keep from laughing and Oliver knows it, catching his wrist and pulling him back onto the bed. The train-car’s lights have long dimmed and almost everyone is either asleep or drunk or both. His shirt is off in a second and Oliver’s soon after. He exhales against the wonderful feeling of skin against skin, the smell of Oliver everywhere and letting himself just bathe in it for a while, eyes closed, before reaching down into the other man’s pants and hearing him gasp against his cheek. He starts to leave a trail of kisses down his stomach, then stops halfway.

 

“Why aren’t you stopping me?” He asks, mouth against his hip bone.

 

“Should I?”

 

“You have a wife.”

 

“You clearly don’t care.”

 

“Do you?”

 

He knows he’ll never get a straight answer.

 

“What I feel for my wife is different from what I feel for you.”

 

“No. What you need from her is different.”

 

“And what’s that?”

 

“What you’ll never get from me.”

 

Oliver exhales through his nose, smooths a hand over his dark curls, grasping them.

 

“And would you give it to me if I asked you to?”

 

_I would give you everything, Oliver. I just don’t think you’d take it if I did._

 

“What were you thinking, Oliver? During that summer when we were together. Were you thinking about her too?”

 

“No.” His grip softens. “-you were the only one on my mind.”

 

“And what about now?”

 

“You’re making this really difficult for both of us.”

 

“We haven’t taken our pants off yet. What are you thinking about, Oliver?”

 

“That’s not important.”

 

“I want to know.”

 

He sighs, sliding his hands over his eyes.

 

“How am I supposed to think _period_ with you sitting on my crotch?”

 

“Do you want me to get off?”

 

“No.”

 

“I should go. I’m being stupid. Sorry, I’m being stupid.”

 

“Don’t. Stay. Stay, Elio.”

 

“I don’t want to just lie here and be your stupid teddy bear again. I wanna do more than that.”

 

The other man takes his face into his hands, pulls him closer until their noses almost touched.

 

“Then quit driving us both up a wall and take my pants off already.”

 

So that’s what he does, as Oliver undid his, grinning when the other leans in and begins to kiss him, slow but shallow at first, then follows his motions, drawing his lips closer with his teeth, making him use his tongue, sending shivers down his spine when he tastes the inside of Oliver’s mouth, as the other man smooths his hands over his inner thighs, parting them further, as Elio feels his knees wanting to go slack.

 

Oliver takes his time as he always did, never out of control, never completely losing himself. Always inquiring, wanting to make sure he’s okay. _Are you sure it’s alright? How does it feel over here? Do you like it here? What about here?_

 

He can tell he’s enjoying himself though, and that maybe secretly, he’s getting a bit excited too, his voice has fallen softer, deeper, almost a purr against his ear. He tells Elio that he doesn’t have to move, let him do it, let him just let him, says he wants this to be nice and gentle, so Elio lets him because he’s almost there, lets himself get swallowed up by the current he’d promised himself he’d never return to, lets it take him ten thousand feet below the surface of their shared, sheltered space. He forgets they’re in a train-car. Forgets the sound of the wheels clattering against the tracks. Forgets they’re on Earth, spinning along a never-ending axis of time.

 

Imagines they’re on the Moon. Somewhere without sound, air, atmosphere. Some distant deserted wasteland, the only thing keeping them warm being their bodies held tight against one another. He feels as though he’s been split into before and after, his back stark cold with the air filtering in from the window, his chest hot, flush against Oliver’s. He holds Oliver’s face in his hands and wonders if they’ll keep finding each other over the years and what will happen afterwards. Wonders if they’ll meet each other again, in a different life, under different circumstances. Wonders how many lifetimes they will have to pass until they finally end up together.

 

He gasps and falls against Oliver’s chest, rolling to rest his cheek against his shoulder. Kisses the side of his neck, blinks, looks at him without ice. Decides he still loves him, despite everything. Realizes he’ll probably never stop feeling this way. It was just the way he was built, was just the way it ran in his blood. He’ll forgive him over and over again. Because he has to. Because it’s easier to feel this happy, easier to lose himself in the way Oliver looked at him now, his stirring, temperate eyes taking them to their own, private summer where the trees never lost their leaves, where the waves never grew too cold to leap into in the middle of the night.

 

He feels safe here, barely feels that they’re moving fifty miles an hour in bleak darkness, the only light being the muted orange glow of a headlight Oliver’s hooked onto the wiring of the bunk above, turning their bodies into dim islands separated by shadows. Closing his eyes, he breathes in his warm, salty scent, shifting a hand to sift his fingers through Oliver’s hair. He isn’t bothered by the sweat clinging to their skin, and all the other things that clung with it. He’s glad Oliver isn’t bothered by it either, just letting his hand trace a lazy circle over his ribs. They don’t look at each other, staring at different points above them.

 

 

**intermission: 1 am, train bunk**

Armie is woken up by the sound of muffled laughing. He furrows his brow, shifts his head, staring at Timothée who’s sitting up now, back against the wall, knees up, toes pressed into the other man’s blanketed hip for warmth. When their eyes meet, the guy snorts, covering his mouth to keep from waking the rest of the train.

 

“...what?”

 

Timothée shakes his head.

 

“No, nothing.”

 

Still giggling.

 

“Seriously, did I rip a fart in my sleep or…?”

 

“ _No_ …” He sinks his forehead against his knees, curls shaking. Then he looks up again. “-just can’t believe you dragged us into the stankest bathroom in the _history_ of bathrooms—

 

“Yeah, well, Timmy, your Elio was driving me _nuts_ —

 

“-it was as if someone busted a can of liquid _ass_ —God, I can still smell some of it on my shirt…”

 

“Maybe they have dry cleaners at Bergamo.”

 

“You really know how to shut people up, Armie —is this how you end _all_ your arguments?” He’s shuddering from how hard he’s trying to steady his voice. “-step one: find a nasty-ass bathroom, step two—

 

“-Do you really think that’s what I do in my spare time...?” But he’s grinning too.

 

“No, seriously, you could make a career out of it —hey, if you ever decide to go into serial killing, it can be part of your master plan, like, drag victim into stank bathroom, hold them there until they pass out—

 

“- _Okay,_ Timmy, let’s talk about _your_ weird talents now—

 

“-I don’t have any weird talents, they are all _perfectly_ decent and utterly _righteous_.” He makes a point to do an eyebrow flash at ‘decent’ and ‘righteous’.

 

“Wow, okay, I’m like imagining super dirty things at the moment.”

 

“Stop.” He shook his head, still laughing. “-I’m probably actually really bad at those things, anyways.”

 

“Uh huh.” Armie doesn’t sound convinced at all. “-sure.”

 

Timmy looks to the bed, picks up a pair of shorts thrown over the blankets, sniffs it. Makes a face.

 

“Aw, is that —?”

 

“Yeah, I wish the train didn’t shake so much when you’re pissing.”

 

“Train toilets are the worst.” He agreed, wrinkling his nose.

 

“And what are you doing going around smelling other people’s pants?”

 

“Your shorts were lying right there…”

 

“Yeah, and lemme guess, they stared at you with their yellow sadness and implored you _Timmy, please pick me up and smell me or suffer seven years of bad lu—_

 

“- _Okay_ , so maybe I don’t have any weird talents, but I am uh, oddly susceptible to making weird, and uh, not entirely _educated_ decisions at certain, um, unannounced instances in time.”

 

Armie sighs, rolling his eyes.

 

“So he’s human like the rest of us.”

 

"What do you mean, of course I’m human.”

 

He turns and just looks at him for a few seconds. God, did Timmy have a really pretty face.

 

“Some of us find it hard to believe…” He mutters, quiet enough for only himself to hear.

 

“What was that?”

 

“I said I need to go pee.”

 

With that, Armie throws the blankets off his stomach, rises, ducks his head to avoid hitting the upper bunk and heads to the (hopefully less stank than before) bathroom.

 

 


	3. third reprise

**iii. 3 am, apartment, upstairs**

He’s never been here before. Well, almost. The only time he’s been here was when he was dreaming, but that was different. You can never get the perfect image of a place through the disjointed, staticky uttered syllables travelling the wire of the receiver, mere glimpses into an another sphere, the two of you connected in some kind of third space of sound. He remembers Oliver’s words. _The bed is much smaller. There’s a couple upstairs, outside on the balcony. There’s too many books, not enough space._

 

_Not enough of you_

 

He tries to shift his memory around, stick in old imaginary index cards into its pages until he’s not sure what’s real anymore. Memory was never perfect anyway. What was wrong then with creating a few false ones out of love and remembrance? There didn’t seem to be any harm.

 

A year had gone by, just like that.

 

When he was old, he would have made a past happier than the real one. And he was perfectly fine with that. You start with something small. A set of words never said. Then you work your way to larger things —a fabricated conversation, a false exchange of gestures, until you construct entire moments, hours, days from your imagination. He would take no photographs. He doesn’t want to break the spell. Little by little, he’s going to let himself go.

 

Dostoevsky once said that it's possible to lie yourself to the truth. Was this what he was trying to do? Lie himself to the truth? What was the truth that he wanted? Did these things stop having meaning once you took the original one out of them? If he doesn’t want the truth that actually happened, what sort of truth was he looking for? 

 

He wants to leave. It felt too real here, the truth, the reality of it all, stank like the blood of day-old murder, too stark and too confrontational. He wants to go back, back to his own place where he can be free to believe what he wants —fill in the gaps here and there with his own touches of the brush. It’s a guilty feeling to be sure, but reality was always more disappointing. It has no care for subtlety, nuance.

 

He takes the cigarette from Oliver’s lips, douses it out in a couple, decisive swipes in the ashtray, already half-filled in grey, feathered flakes. He rolls his eyes at him. This man was going to die by deliberately breathing poison into his lungs. What an idiot.

 

“Why am I here?” He doesn’t look at his eyes, staring at the recesses of his throat.

 

If he looks at his eyes, he won’t be able to keep his voice level, measured. Oliver’s eyes could do that to him —turn him inside of himself and reach a hand down into his intestines, find his tenderest spot. He could make his body temperature change from the Fahrenheit of his gaze.

 

“Because I need someone to talk to. Because things have been bad lately.”

 

“Bad?”

 

“Yeah.” Oliver laughs humorlessly. “-downright terrible.”

 

“Well,” He stares at their feet, not quite touching. “-fuck…”

 

“I know.”

 

He shifts, resting his head in Oliver’s lap. The other man liked to play with his hair when he was feeling stressed, worn out. And he liked the feeling of his fingers traipsing through his forest of strands, twisting and bending to a rhythm only known by them. A search and rescue of their own accord.

 

He takes one of Oliver’s hands that had inevitably fallen over his head, begins to run his lips slowly over the edge of his fingers, memorizing their shape and curvature. He always ended up finding new things he’d never noticed before, a faint, barely there mole, a slight bending of joints beneath his skin, a curious new sprouting of hairs, the delicate underlay of ligaments.

 

He knows why he’s trying to remember all of this. Oliver will never be his. So he’s trying to save up as much of him as he can, before he really has to release him. Maybe he doesn’t really want to be released. Maybe that’s why he keeps coming back, like a limb on a spring, that can never travel too far from its box.

 

They were part of each other now. Even when they were apart, they were together.

 

“There have been more fights now. At first, they only happened on weekends. Now she looks for every opportunity to land a strike, carve a mark.”

 

“Does she know?”

 

“No. But she suspects. Thinks it’s another woman. Simple people and their simple minds.”

 

“Would she care if it was a man?”

 

“She’s positively _repulsed_ by me at this point —I hardly think she’d care if it were a dog…”

 

“Are we really going to go down there?”

 

“No. I think your little peach escapade went far enough for the both of us.”

 

They laugh a little.

 

“Is it causing issues with the kids?”

 

“They’re practically grown up —they’re hardly ever home nowadays. Though I’d doubt they’d really care to visit —nothing but banging doors and smashed plates on most evenings.”

 

“Wild nights, huh?”

 

“Not the kind that I like.”

 

“That why you moved here?”

 

“Yeah. I come here on the weekends. It’s better for both her and I when we see less of each other. Gives us more breathing space.”

 

He doesn’t want to ever want more breathing space with Oliver. He doesn’t want to grow tired of him, let him hate him, let them fight, but never let him love, or learn to love the silence that hardens between them like ice across a lake. He’s okay with a vicious love. Violence over silence. He’ll take it any day.

 

“Do you think you’ll ever need it? Breathing space between us?”

 

He grins wryly.

 

“We don’t see each other enough for that. It’s like we’re both in sensory deprivation tanks when we’re apart.”

 

“Apparently you tend to hallucinate in them.” He bites the base of Oliver’s index finger gently. “-vividly.”

 

“Too vividly.”

 

He looks up at him, Oliver leaning against the side of his bed. There was no space for them up there anyways, every inch of its surface was littered in books, beautiful like the sweeping face of a mountain, textual, didactic. A landfill of forgotten words, frozen intellect locked tight in dusty old jars. _I had to start moving the ones I kept in our house. Most of them are collected from fairs, yard sales. She’s always complaining that I pick up too much trash, discarded shit. Says there’s a reason nobody wants them anymore._

 

He wonders if he was just something Oliver picked up. Wonders if he’s part of some collection. Hopes that if he is, that he’s the best, the finder's favourite that he never forgets to dust and polish. That he’s kept in a glass case different from the rest.

 

He knows it’s just a matter of time before both of them become like that, forgotten artifacts of someone’s collection. He can already see it now, days will pass and it won’t matter anymore. Things will lose their meaning the way trees lose their leaves. In time, meaning will grow back in, these things will ebb and flow like the tide. _Some things only change by staying the same._ He’s rearranging Heraclitus and his fragments now. Every memory is just another spool of thread into that warm, heady summer. Lush rainfalls, still, unfulfilled nights. Evenings of clemency, reprimands.

 

“Do you still love her?”

 

“Of course.” He scoffs. “-I wouldn’t have married her otherwise.”

 

“Then why do you fight so much?”

 

Oliver laughs, and it’s garish in its cruelty.

 

“We love each other. We just can’t stand each other.”

 

He pushes back the hem of Oliver’s shirt with his head, rests the side of his face against his skin, lips drifting across the light trail of hair on his abdomen.

 

“And what do you do with a love like that?”

 

Oliver doesn’t say a word, though he can tell he wants to.

 

_Is it better to speak or to die?_

 

He feels it —the silent prayer to read his fingers, unscramble his coded motions that sway back and forth, hanging unbalanced like wet clothing on garden wires.

 

_Separation, preservation, separation, preservation._ Dancing like two dreidels in a death whirl, each waiting for the other to give out.

 

**intermission: 4 am, apartment, balustrade**

Timothée usually makes a point to detach himself from him when they slip out of character. Him and _him_. Elio and Armie. He needs space from them both.

 

But he finds himself, finds themselves falling into the same places, same configurations of a past scene, where Oliver’s thighs are resting over his, though they’re on the balcony ledge on the bookstore's upper floor guest room —the best imitation of Oliver’s apartment they could find and he’s mirroring the motions, absently, running his hands back and forth across the fabric over his skin.

 

It’s not the intimacy of flesh against flesh, it falls somewhere more abstract, stranger. Some of the rawness is lost, replaced with the edginess of fear and hiding. But it’s there. Somewhere amongst the invisible interwoven threads connecting them, like fibrin over wounds, to one another. It’s there.

 

He doesn’t say it out loud but it’s comfortable like this. He’s grown used to it, the closeness. They’re not playing at love anymore. At least he isn’t.

 

“It’s your last scene tomorrow —can you believe it?”

 

Timothée looks up at him, weighing his gaze. He’s never had to do this before, try to simplify people down to equations, decipher their meanings.

 

“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” He looks out into the shifty darkness, surveys the rustling of leaves. “-thirty-four days gone in a heartbeat, just like that.”

 

“Are you ready?”

 

“In a manner of speaking. I’ve had a long time to prepare. Long time to get comfortable.”

 

“Yeah. I’m sure you’ll be great. You’re incredible, Timmy, really.” He beams radiantly at him. “-you know how I know?”

 

“How do you know?” Timothée can’t hide his smile back, the faint blush over his face.

 

“Because it doesn’t feel like acting, with you.” Armie insists. “-every scene felt so genuine and heartfelt —God, I know that sounds so generic and contrived but, I’m serious, I swear I’m dead serious.”

 

“I know you are.” He replies, softer than he wanted to. “-that’d be a shitty thing to lie about, Armie —I know you’d tell it to my face if I was an asshole.”

 

The other man laughs, looking down at their legs.

 

“Yeah.” He reaches a hand to grasp Timmy’s bare arm, squeezes gently. “-thanks.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For not being an asshole.”

 

They both break into easy laughter afterwards.

 

A strange thing happens after that. Neither knows what to say. After the initial praise, things seem to deaden, turn cold, freeze over. Ice across the lake. Two human beings not knowing how to act around each other now. Not act. Be. Exist. Interact.

 

Timothée has never had this uncomfortable silence with him before and he scrambles to find a viable hook for conversation, anything, anything.

 

“Your take on Oliver’s wife was interesting.”

 

Fuck. Anything but that. Rewind, rewind, please rewind. But he’s said it too loud, it’s too late. He’s opened Pandora’s box, he can’t swallow back the beetles now.

 

“Oh? How so?”

 

“It was unexpectedly generic.”

 

Fuck, not again. God, what was the matter with him, now he was just digging himself deeper and deeper into risky, uncharted territory. The no man’s land of conversations. The be-all and end-all spelling the beginning of early ruin.

 

“You think so?” The tone of his voice has changed. It makes him recall _Hamlet_ —he smells a rat.

 

Armie stares back at him and it’s the way Elio never wanted Oliver to look at him —that cold, hostile gaze that later reveals itself as mere shyness. But Armie isn’t Oliver, not now, and his look of ice is just that —pure ice, fraught and unforgiving. It burns holes into him and he finds it hard to look him in the face now.

 

“Yeah —Oliver fighting with his wife all the time, what’s up with that? Makes their marriage look cheap and fraudulent.”

 

“Married couples aren’t always happy with each other.”

 

“You never saved an ounce of praise for her. You didn’t make her look human.”

 

“I said I loved her. I said we loved each other we just—

 

“-just couldn’t _stand_ each other. Yeah, what next level bullshit, Armie, what the _fuck_ —

 

“-Timmy, _what_ is your _problem,_ was my acting really _that_ _bad_ —

 

“-your acting wasn’t bad, you just made Oliver look like a fucking liar—

 

“-Well, maybe he _is_ a fucking liar—!”

 

He freezes, instinctively pulling back. Armie’s never shouted like this before, not at him. He doesn’t know how to begin to say sorry.

 

“I think Oliver’s a liar. At least partially. It’s not his fault —he’s been brought up this way, by his authoritarian father obviously, taught to lie and suppress his true feelings for the sake of pleasing others. He doesn’t believe he can be happy because he was taught that it’s not important.”

 

“I think you’re reading into it too much—

 

“Timmy, don’t act like I don’t know what I’m talking about—

 

“Oliver was always meant to be part enigma —why do you think we never learn his _last_ _name_ —

 

“-Oh, and _I’m_ reading into it too much—

 

“-I’m just saying maybe we’re _both_ too deep into this thing to see all the details clearly. We need to take a step back. It’s not our job to make assumptions, predictions. The best we can hope for is to reveal the subtleties and nuance and hope that it carries through to the audience.”

 

Armie looks back at him, almost impressed.

 

“That’s a clever little spiel you’ve spun, Timmy. Real cute. Only problem I have with it is that we have no audience. We’re doing this for fun. So why are you making such a big deal about it?”

 

“Armie—

 

“-And don’t you dare lie to me.” He stares straight at him, doesn’t even blink. “-thirty-four days doesn’t seem very long, but trust me, it’s long enough for anyone to develop a nose for bullshit. And I’ve gotten quite a sharp one over the years.”

 

There’s no point in hiding it any longer. It’s been bothering him like a bad smell.

 

“Your interpretation of Oliver’s wife. You wanted to distance her from your real one, that’s why you made her like that —a fucking generic robot woman from some 1960s soap opera commercial.”

 

“So what if I did?” Armie narrows his eyes, nostrils flaring. “-my marriage is my fucking business. I have a right to keep those matters private.”

 

“I know. I know you do.”

 

“So why are you so upset? What the hell did I do wrong?”

 

“Armie, look, I, um…” But he can’t go on from there. His voice breaks and he feels his vision blur, tears stinging his eyes. He covers his face in his hands, shaking, sobbing.

 

He can feel Armie’s body language changing, his expression morphing into shock and concern —shitty, patronizing concern and he feels his large hands first grasping his shoulders and then his arms around him, hugging him tightly, close to him. He can hear their hearts beating together, almost in unison. He can feel Armie shaking, too.

 

“Shit —fuck, fuck, I’m so sorry, Timmy, please —I was too harsh, I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t thinking, I forgot that—

 

“-You forgot what?”

 

“That you’re ten years younger—

 

“ _Don’t._ ” He grits through his teeth, shuddering. “-don’t _use_ that on me—

 

“Timmy—

 

“Ten years doesn’t mean _shit_ — it doesn’t make me a _fucking_ _kid,_ so that you can tell me the fucking 'Nickelodeon' version of what you wanna say—

 

“-I know it doesn’t, Timmy, I—

 

“-I didn’t _ask_ to be born in  _1995—_

 

“-Hey—

 

“-sometimes, sometimes I really wish we were the same age so you’d _look_ at me, really look at me and see someone _equal_ and not whatever the fuck you _think_ you see.”

 

Armie falls silent. The only sound now is Timothée crying and breathing raggedly against his chest, clinging to him, shuddering, shaking. The other man holds him the entire time, never letting go. Afraid to let go. Afraid to move. Afraid to snap whatever remained yet unbroken.

 

In between his sobs, he feels something change. He knows Armie is aware of it too —he was too clever, too intelligent not to know. _What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. Parce que c’était lui, parce que c’était moi._

 

After some time, Timmy stops crying. The neck of Armie’s shirt is soaked and he shyly wipes the remaining tears on his own sleeve. It takes him a while to meet his eyes again.

 

“Sorry. That was, uh…uncalled for…” He tries to laugh it off. “-typical melodramatic theatre-kid bullshit.”

 

“That wasn’t bullshit. It’s okay to cry, Timmy. You don’t become a lesser person because of it.”

 

“I know. I’m just glad you’re not mad.”

 

“Mad?” Armie frowns. “-why would I be mad? You gave me signal, a sign. You stopped me before I went full-blown asshole —’least I hope you did…”

 

He laughs, throat still partly choked up. Armie is quiet, still not certain he’s alright.

 

Timmy looks at him, his hands quietly playing with the hem of his shirt. He leans in, face pressing against Armie’s throat. Leaves a kiss, so brief and light, it almost wasn’t there. But he feels it, he knows he did.

 

He lifts his face and kisses the side of Armie’s face, the same spot Elio kissed Oliver the first night they slept together. Almost goes for his lips. Then sinks his head back down, still for a few moments, before mouthing words against Armie’s collarbone. Over and over again. Endless, unavailing, Sisyphean.

 

He feels them, only the faintest, most primordial outlines of those three words, but he knows them well, has heard them in his life, time and time again. Sometimes they break him. Sometimes they make him feel like he’s finally come home.

 

So Armie finds himself absently tracing those same three words, in loose, thready cursive against his back, giving them back to him, softly, as a gift, until he’s sure they’re both definitely coming back home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter, last chapter


	4. last reprise

**iv. 5 am, monet's berm**

As the startling water engulfs him, he feels every fibre in his body pull taut, his mind in frisson, not a single thought passing through his web of nerves. It lasts for a few seconds, the quietest he’s ever had. Yet unilluminated by the sun, he sinks into a cradle of deep space on Earth, his limbs’ motions laborious, languorous, surrendering to the curving, silken expanse around him. He thinks of this as the last day of his life.

 

Somewhere along his descent, his lungs begin to cry out, constrict —the flurry of bubbles exiting his nostrils quicken, rush, but he fights it, wishing to stay in this room of calm for a few moments longer. He keeps his eyes closed. Nothing moves past him, whether darting around the base of his legs, or zipping through the surf overhead. It’s as if he’s the only one here. Last man on Earth. Leaving the way he’d entered —naked, bare, unfulfilled.

 

But even in the darkness, they know each other. _Nella notte,_ he thinks again, as those gently calloused hands catch his waist, pulling him towards him as they both begin their return to the surface with the snap of the other man’s calves against the water, silenced, severed from the sounds of the land. As they slowly rise, he feels one hand leave his side, swinging up, speeding their ascent.

 

All at once it happens, the surface is broken, the filters torn apart and sound and life re-enters his eardrums again, the thunderous murmurs of every organism breathing, breaching his attic of thought and taking roost once more. He thinks he even hears the grass sing, their wispy wind song, drawing their last few notes before the sun climbs above the hills.

 

The faintest rays scatter over the top of Oliver’s head, as softer hushes of reflection fall across the edges of his grin, just at the lines there, sanded, Mars toned. There’s even some light upon his lashes, though none fall into his eyes. They’re treading water now, the other man sweeping the current with an arm, getting them to shallower depths. He wants to feel the sand, the bony pebbles between his toes. Strangely, he wants to be reminded he exists again.

 

When they can comfortably stand on their tiptoes, knees partly bent, Oliver tucks back some dark, damp tendrils that have clung to the side of his forehead, holding his face in his hands again. He would never get tired of this, the way his fingers felt against his cheek.

 

“You’re so dramatic.”

 

“I’ve never drowned before. I thought maybe I’d try it out.”

 

“There are things you only get to try once.”

 

“Oh, but you caught me. You foiled my plan.”

 

“Today’s not a good day to die.”

 

“No?”

 

“No. There’s something happening. A festival, I think, closer to town.”

 

“Dancing?”

 

“Yes.” Oliver laughs. “-dancing. Lots and lots of it. And alcohol. Maybe a few good songs too. Do you really want to miss all of that?”

 

He glances away from him, at where their feet would be underwater. It’s dark, still.

 

“I’ve never gotten used to sharing you.”

 

Oliver’s hand slides down, smoothing a spot over his shoulder.

 

“You don’t have to. Not today. Today, I’m all yours.”

 

_What about tomorrow? And the tomorrow after that? And tomorrow’s tomorrow’s tomorrow?_

 

“I never really liked dancing.”

 

“Me neither.” He chuckles, gripping his own shoulders now. It’s starting to get cold. “-I don’t think most people do. We all just like pretending and pretending and soon enough it becomes fun.”

 

“A world of imposters.”

 

“But we’re free because we know so.”

 

He smiles to himself as they make their way out of the water, the chill shocking their legs, icy droplets hanging off the hairs, laughing and shuddering, sticking close to one another to save the last bit of warmth they had.

 

Crouching down at the tree where they’d left their clothes, he shakes his head furiously as well as his limbs and Oliver joins him —they’ve forgotten to bring towels, and so they do a jittery, skivvy dance to shake the water off. Squirrels scatter, sparrows hop away, taken aback. He pulls his sweater over his head, sighing from the soothing heat, jimmies into his pants and underwear. Oliver’s faster, he’s already pulling his socks on.

 

They leave their shoes. The other man settles down, back leaning against the tree. He doesn’t want to leave yet. He’s grown to love this place, too.

 

He notices Oliver’s gone very quiet when he sits down beside him. He seems to be playing with something in his pocket, spare change most likely from the sounds. He watches the grass beneath them starting to shimmer. The sun is rising.

 

“It’s alright if you don’t want to talk about it.”

 

“It?” Then he remembers, the light in his eyes dimming slightly. “-oh. Right. It. It’s okay, really. It’s bound to come up at the dinner table at some point.”

 

“I was just talking to him last month, actually, on the phone. I…I still don’t really believe it. He sounded fine. Energetic, even.”

 

“It happens. Sometimes it happens like that.”

 

“Were the arrangements…?”

 

“Yeah.” He nods, for once okay that they weren’t looking at each other. “-my mother handled the more technical things. It’s funny. We’ve always been an odd little family, you’d think people would know we wanted something a bit different from tradition.”

 

“There’s not much we can do in a land of sheep.”

 

“That’s a bit morbid. I think there’s some salvation, still.”

 

He laughs.

 

“You never really lost your youth, have you?”

 

“Where did yours go?”

 

“Squandered in the wrong places. Never appreciated it when I had it.” He turns to him, rolling his eyes. “-I know. How fatalistically American.”

 

“Well, sometimes being young is overrated. You’re freer when you’re older if you do it right.”

 

“Guess I never learned. Must be why I’m so goddamn tired all the time now…” Oliver shook his head. “-you know, some days I don’t even remember what I had for breakfast the day before, or even what I did really. You think something’s catching up with me?”

 

“Same thing that’s been hunting all of us.” He shrugs, glancing at a nondescript mole along his arm. “-time. And then some.”

 

They’re quiet for a while. This time, it’s Oliver who leans his head against his shoulder. His eyes are closed and the other watches as the sunlight shifts into the grass and trees around them, casting soft, bright patches over their socks and knees.

 

Shifting his head, he reaches a hand beyond the neck of Oliver’s shirt, picks out the star of David that still hung from the chain after all these years. He turns it in his fingers, warming the golden surface. Had he always worn it when they were together?

 

He didn’t wear his anymore. He kept it in his wallet. Its edges began to dig into his collarbone when he slept and began getting caught in his clothing, sweaters, anything with a yarn knit. One day, he almost thought he lost it. It worried him for weeks, until it turned up inside the pocket of one of his pants from the dry cleaners. Must have slipped out, maybe when he was rushing to catch the subway to work.

 

As Oliver dozed off, Elio thinks about the blank years, the time that eluded him. What could he have been doing that had made him forget such large stretches of space? He could’ve seen Oliver at some point in those years, maybe as a familiar stranger near the back of the bar, maybe a figure swept in the motion of the midnight lights red, blue and violet over fevered music, maybe even a missed, blurred face at the market. Now he would never remember.

 

He’d forgotten about death over the years. It’s easy to forget certain things until you’re suddenly confronted by them, in a cold, biting strike of irony. At one point, he may have believed he and Oliver were going to live forever. Meet each other forever. Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow, bleeding into each other endlessly, a never-ending river of existence.

 

Then his father died. He felt a curious, stubborn winter take residence in his heart. For some time, it took over completely, lighting the neon letters of _No Vacancy_ for all other things he used to store there.

 

He lost some more time, then. You don’t really have time if you can’t fill the spaces with feeling. It’s not really there. Like wind drifting past your house, your ears covered.

 

For some time, he couldn’t even cry.

 

Then it came all at once, and he thought the sorrow would never stop running from his eyes. He thought his room would become an ocean. He doesn’t tell Oliver this, but that was the first, real time he thought he would drown.

 

_We rip out so much of ourselves that we go bankrupt by the time we’re thirty._

 

He’s saved ghost spots for his father, not just outside, but inside. He occupies a small, warm space inside his mind, he can almost see him now, lounging on the sofa, lamps dimmed, reading an old book or the newspaper. Maybe there’s a mug of tea before him, on the coffee table scattered with lovely, ancient yellow-papered things. Maybe the television is on, in mute, just scattered motions in silence.

 

He remembers his father telling him not to kill it. He almost had. Then he’d dried his eyes with the back of his hand and breathed, laying still on the single bed in his apartment for a long time. He waited many hours, maybe almost the entire night. Then he’d called Oliver.

 

They’d talked until the sun was well in the sky, which had itself become a pale blue by then. He’d skipped work that day. He’d walked to the park sometime later, trying to find a place that resembled Monet’s berm. He couldn’t.

 

It had only been a little cold. The air had felt so nice, he’d never felt so terrible, helpless against the way nature was laughing at him. He’d wanted to catch a cold, get sick for a while, then get better as his mind recovered also. Wishing for snow in July was ridiculous but that was the kind of person he was.

 

He wonders what Oliver had done that day.

 

Is there a cure, he wonders. A cure for wellness?

 

Oliver stirs, his hair tickling his shoulder. He hears him grunt some soft, unintelligible things, before shifting his face to a more comfortable spot. It takes him a few more minutes to blink, lashes glinting against the sun. His nap was so short, there’s no sand in his eyes.

 

The man turns to him, smiling in that warm, sleepy way, tender, childlike. He threw these gentle things around too easily. Elio wonders if his heart will give out one day, from it.

 

“Maybe this isn’t a good time.” Oliver murmurs, partly to himself.

 

“A good time? For what?”

 

He looks at him, blue eyes heavy.

 

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something. I keep telling myself it’s not the right time, even though it’s passed, for ages now.”

 

“Ages?”

 

“Yeah.” He looks down. “-almost a year.”

 

“A terminal illness?” But he’s relieved when Oliver glares at him, in his own friendly way.

 

“No. Haven’t swallowed that bug yet. Thankfully.”

 

He laughs.

 

“Good. Me neither.”

 

“Elio.” He says, his voice has a different tone now.

 

“Yes?”

 

“I got divorced.”

 

They don’t say anything for a while. He feels a familiar painful tugging in his chest, the odd little thing he would get when he felt sad for no reason. For a second, it’s as though both their hearts have stopped.

 

“So you’ve moved on? Starting new?” He hears his own words, yet doesn’t feel his mouth moving.

 

“I don’t think I ever have, Elio.” He shook his head. “-moved on, that is.”

 

“Then what are you…?”

 

“I think I’m returning.” He replies. “-I think I’m finally returning. It took a while for me to come to terms with it, but I think I’ll never live with myself if I don’t at least try.”

 

“Returning?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Oliver takes a deep breath, rising from his spot and he almost follows him, but the other man gestures for him to wait. He reaches into his pocket, digging for something that seemed to have fallen miles deep.

 

When he gets down on one knee, the other man is barely breathing. He looks up at him, lips trembling.

 

“Elio.” His voice seems to take centuries to reach him.

 

“Oliver?”

 

“Will you marry me?”

 

The first time he tries to answer him, no sound comes out. But he knows he’s answered when he sees Oliver’s face, knows he’s read his eyes, knows he’s given him the right answer when the other man clutches his face, ring hitting the grass, hands shaking, fingers red around the edges, kissing him, kissing him as if it’s the last day of his life, too.

 

He feels the bark of the tree digging into his back, feels splinters getting caught in his hair, but all he really feels is Oliver’s hands against his face, his lashes brushing against his own, his breath hush over his as if to say _where have you been all my life, Elio?_ And all he would be able to answer with would be: _waiting, waiting, waiting._

 

The tears come before he smells them in his nose.

 

When he’s still rubbing his eyes, for longer than he should be, longer than how long someone should cry for something like this, Oliver knows something is wrong.

 

“Elio.” His hands grasp his shoulders. “-Elio, what’s the matter?”

 

“No.” He shakes his head. “-no, these are not…”

 

“Elio?”

 

“No, these, these aren’t mine…” He stares at his damp palms, fingers trembling. “-these aren’t…”

 

“Elio-

 

“-I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Oliver.”

 

He twists out of his grasp, runs to his bike and takes off onto the road.

 

“Elio!”

 

Before he calls him by another name, Oliver scrambles onto his own bike and hurries after him.

 

**7 am, to the summer house, attic**

He only lost sight of him twice. But thirty-four days together, and then some, has gotten them used to each other’s habits and now Armie has a clear idea of where Timothée is headed.

 

Pedaling hard across long stretches of trails, empty of all but them and the sun, he slows when he nears town, careful not to crash into early risers in the street, feeling his bike jolt and skip against the choppy cobblestone path. He knows these turns, these narrow, winded routes like his own city now, he could ride with his eyes closed.

 

He hears Timothée drop his bike, the clattering of rubber and steel against pavement, hears his footfalls slapping the ground —they'd left their shoes by the river, then a door slam, sounds muffled afterwards.

 

Armie skids his bike alongside the gate, leaning it against the wall before striding briskly towards the house, not wanting to run, to avoid causing a scene. They’d filmed the final scene yesterday but Luca decided they would stay an extra day to get a head-start on editing —cutting footage, choosing takes, and the like. It would also presumably ensure the crew didn’t leave anything behind —they’d get to double-check, triple check if necessary. They were all still here. They’d vacated the house, but some were still around the backyard chatting work and bouncing ideas around.

 

He swings open the door, makes his way up the stairs. Stops by the attic door that hasn’t been closed, not completely. The slightest gap is left and he can hear Timothée breathing, uneven, further back in the room, can hear the mattress creaking as he shifts to face away from him.

 

“Timmy?”

 

He knocks gently, though he knows he’s not sleeping.

 

“Don’t come in.” 

 

“Why not?” He keeps his voice calm and patient. “-why can’t I come in?”

 

“I’m a mess.” Armie hears him exhale shakily, sniffing. “-God, I’m such a fucking mess…”

  

“Hey—

 

“-You don’t have to see me like this, Armie —you, you’ve already seen this shit, like, two _days_ ago…” He’s trying to laugh, now.

 

"Timmy, it's okay."

 

"No, it's not. It's not fucking okay, _I'm_ not fucking _okay_ and I just—

 

He cuts himself off and cries into his hands. 

 

So Armie waits for a while, giving him time _—_ _dreads the thought of having messed him up._ He looks down at his feet, feeling the floorboards buzz as though they were losing their solidity.  _I don't want either of us to have to pay, one way or another._ Then he gently pushes the door a tiny bit further, still staying on the other side.  

 

“Timmy?”

 

“What?” He mumbles.

 

“Will you let me in?” He asks, softer this time. “-please?”

 

He hears him sniffing, then clearing his throat.

 

“Okay. Okay, fine. Get in here.” Timmy mutters. “-hurry up.”

 

Armie opens the door, makes his way to the mattress and sinks down on the edge. He turns to face the boy whose curled up on the other side, still not facing him. He wants to smooth a hand through his hair, but doesn’t want to seem overly patronizing. So instead, he rests a hand over his elbow, tugs gently.

 

“Hey. Tell me what’s wrong.”

 

“No.” He shakes his head. “-you don’t want to know.”

 

“No. I do.” Armie persists. “-tell me, Timmy, please—

 

“-God, this is _fucking_ bullshit…!” Timmy squashes his eyelids with his knuckles.

 

“Timmy—

 

“-Don’t you _get_ it, Armie—? Nothing changed. Nothing _fucking_ changed. _Nothing_ —

 

“-Hey—

 

“-We could try to redo it over and over again — _nothing’s_ gonna change. All this fooling around _didn’t do_ _shit_ —

 

“Timothée—

 

“- _You’re_ gonna go back to L.A, back to your wife and kids, and _I’m_ gonna go back to New York and it’s gonna be like _nothing_ _even_ —

 

“-We can _visit_ each other, Timmy, you’re always welcome to—

 

“- _When you_ _took out that ring—”_

 

He screws his eyes shut, gasping. But he has to get this out, he can’t keep holding it in anymore.

 

“Armie, I…I almost thought—” Timmy’s voice catches in his throat. “-f-for a second, I—”

 

But he can’t say anymore. As if a series of hands dug their fingers inside his mouth, jamming his voice box, crying out:  _Never should have said anything._

 

“I’m sorry.” He can feel the familiar sting start to pierce his eyes again. “-you know what, it’s okay. It’s okay —I’m young, I’m young, so maybe I don’t really know what I fucking want.”

 

Armie is silent. The one time Timothée expected him to comfort him immediately, he doesn’t.

 

So Timothée nudges a hand over and curls his index finger over Armie’s.

 

“I don’t want you to go.” He murmurs, barely loud enough for him to hear. _I never did count the days._

 

“Okay.”

 

_Something always held me back, got in the way._

 

“No, Armie.” He turns to face him, glaring as if he wasn’t taking him seriously. “-I don’t _want_ you to go.”

 

“Okay.” He brushes back the hair that’s fallen over Timmy’s eyes. “-then I’ll stay.”

 

Timothée shakes his head, knowing Armie doesn’t know what he means.

 

“ _I don’t want you to go._ ” The boy presses one side of his face into the mattress, feeling the tears soak the fabric. He squeezes his eyes closed, jaw shaking. “-I don’t want…”

 

But maybe he does know what he means. Maybe he really does know. Maybe the reason Armie’s holding his chin, running his thumb across his lips over and over again, telling him it’s okay, that it really is okay, is to get him to stop talking. And maybe it’s to tell him that he knows —of course he knows, but God save them both, if he ever knew what to do about it.

 

**10 pm, airport, leaving for l.a**

The terminal benches are mostly deserted, save for a few people sleeping with their luggage here and there. Most people have either gone to the food court for late night dining or to the souvenir shops for last-minute gift shopping. Armie sits by the enormous windows, looking outside and then down at his watch, sighing. His flight got delayed due to some fuel issues and it would be another half hour before it arrived.

 

Timmy sat next to him, scrolling through his phone. He snickers gently from time to time, occasionally flipping hair that got into his eyes. He’s changed back to his own clothes —grey hoodie, dark skinny jeans and Nikes. If Elio still clung to him, you couldn’t tell from the outside.

 

From time to time, he’d look up at the people passing by, watch their own particular gaits, observing them closely before turning back to his screen again. Maybe he was trying to guess where they were going. Who they were, what they did for a living. Who they were going home to. Who they were leaving.

 

A sinking feeling begins to make its way into Armie’s throat as he realizes he doesn’t really know what’s going through Timothée’s mind. He didn’t really know what he was thinking.

 

Maybe Crema had given him false hope that he knew him. Maybe that simple little town made Timothée easier to predict because they didn’t have that many options for where they could go, what they could do, what they could think. The airport was enormous and starkly urban. It opened up his mind to a coldness, a vastness that could have never been housed where they had been.

 

He thinks maybe Timmy is thinking about going home. Seeing his friends again, going back to school, back to his old life, as he liked to call it. Or maybe he’s thinking about something different entirely. What had _he_ been thinking about when he was his age?

 

Work. He’d been thinking about work. Securing his next project, mentally calculating how long he could last with the current salary before he’d have to go searching for a new one. Acting was tedious, that way. You could never be really sure how things would go, how they would turn out. Maybe you would love it, maybe you would hate it. Maybe you would drink so much alcohol afterwards you wouldn’t even remember some of the projects you did.

 

He remembers never really being happy after completing those big-budget films, those summer blockbusters that failed to really make an impression on him in the end. In the end, he’d gone home, crashed on the bed and dreamed of things that had nothing to do with the movie he’d just starred in. He dreamed of could-have-beens. He dreamed of second chances, possibilities.

 

He’d dreamed of a summer love too, once.

 

It was true, he never had one. And now that he thought about it, the dream wasn’t really a coherent series of events —it was less tangible, like a great, big feeling that encompassed the space around him like a parachute holding the entire fabric of the cosmos. He'd watched his world overflow with colour and sound of such vibrancy, he could still taste some of it in his mouth when he woke up.

 

He can’t remember his summer love’s face. Maybe it was a girl. Maybe it was a boy. Maybe when he’s drunk he can play a fun little game where he convinces himself his summer love looked like Timothée’s Elio. Or just Timothée.

 

He realizes it’s not Elio he’s fallen in love with. 

 

_This is the final boarding call for passengers who are booked on the 10 pm flight to Los Angeles. Please proceed to gate 3 immediately. The plane will be leaving in ten minutes._

 

“Shit, I’ve gotta go.”

 

Timmy rises a moment after he does, running his eyes over the luggage, dusting invisible debris from his pants.

 

“You sure you’ve got everything?”

 

_No. Not if you aren’t coming. I’ll feel like I’ve left something. Something special and very dear._

 

“Yeah. I think so.”

 

They start making their way towards the gate, Timmy offering to haul a couple suitcases, slinging a bulging bag of more belongings over his arm. Armie glances over at him, smiling when he’s not looking. From anyone else’s view, it looked like they were going home together.

 

He does the trick he liked to do sometimes when he was feeling numb —looking straight ahead, yet keeping his eyes unfocused on any point beyond him. All the faces and lights around him became a blur of motion, as if he was the only real thing here, the rest of them just props and puppets who came to life at night.

 

_It doesn’t feel like going home. Not really. It feels more like leaving._

 

When they’re almost at the gate, Armie stops. There’s not much time left now, maybe five, six more minutes. He turns to Timothée who’s looking at him, dumbfounded.

 

“What? Did you forget something?”

 

_If not later, then when?_

 

“Come with me.” 

 

He makes them drop their things right on the floor and grabs Timothée by the wrist, rushing them in the opposite direction, towards the men’s washroom.

 

Once they’ve barged in, Armie pitches each stall forward until he finds a vacant one, drags Timothée in with him, slamming him against the door as gently as he could, which was not as gentle as he wanted, cutting off his cry of confusion with the euphoric relief of his mouth against his.

 

Caught by surprise, the boy’s lips stiffen at first, but soon gave way as he kissed back just as eagerly, yanking him closer, hands in his hair so tight it makes Armie wince against his mouth, his own fingers hooked into the front loops of Timothée’s jeans, dragging him closer still. He forgets about his flight and just loses himself in this, the feeling of his lips, the way he tasted — _of feeling in each shiver something totally alien and yet by no means unfamiliar, this was like coming home, like asking_

 

_Where have I been all my life?_

 

They seem to break apart at the same time, both gasping for breath, looking down at their feet, hands still linking them to each other. Timmy’s face is flushed and Armie suddenly finds himself thinking _I can never undo it, never unwrite it, never unlive it, or relive it —it’s stuck there like a vision of fireflies that kept saying_

 

“You have a good memory…” Timothée finally says.

 

“What?”

 

“In the book, this was where they last kissed. Elio reminisces about it, years later.”

 

He looks at Timmy and he can’t believe it. He thought it was just another reprise. Just another play for fun.

 

“You idiot, I wasn’t kissing Elio. I was kissing _you_.”  _I'm sure I'll pay for it somehow though._

 

“Armie—

 

_Of course, you don't know._

 

“-Were you kissing me? Or was that—?”

 

He can’t believe it, he’s getting jealous of a fictional character he played. 

 

“No, Armie —of course I was kissing you.” He laughs, soft, earnest. “-and even when I shouldn’t have been. In some takes for the film, I was kissing you too.”

 

_Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot._

 

Armie hears the airport announcement echoing through the speakers again, looks down, sees Timothée is still holding onto him, gripping the collar of his jacket, staring at an indefinite spot around his throat. Smiling gently, privately to himself.  _You could've had this instead._

 

“You should get going.” He doesn’t meet his eyes.

 

“Yeah.”

 

But he doesn’t go anywhere.

 

“Hey. You’re gonna miss that plane.”

 

But right now he’s thinking about all the other things he’s going to miss, after he gets on his flight and goes home. He wonders if his life would start feeling like a second version of what it had been up until now. What it could have been. Wonders how long it will take for Timothée to fall back into his normal life. Or if like him, that maybe he never will. 

 

_We missed out on so much. Tomorrow I go back to my coma, and you to yours._

 

No. He would visit Timothée again. He would make sure he visited him too, come home to meet his wife and kids. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes Oliver made. He wouldn’t distance himself. He wouldn’t try to let go.

 

Two minutes.

 

He kisses Timothée one more time, gentler, and in a way, with more feeling. It would be easier that way. Maybe.

 

_But this thing that almost never was, still beckons._

 

Then Timmy lets go of him, pulling back the door behind them and they start making their way to the gate again.

 

 

* * *

 

Timothée watches the plane take off. Hands pressed tight against his ears, he stands outside and watches as the sweep of white glowing deep orange and yellow in the lights of the runway, surges forth faster and faster, the ground thundering beneath his feet. Even with his ears covered he can still hear it —the roar of escape to elsewhere, to nowhereland. He knows this is the part where the person would cry, watching their lover leave, but somehow right now, he couldn’t do it. He never cried at the right times.

 

_He came. He left. Nothing else had changed._

 

He watches until the plane becomes nothing but a streak of light across the sky, then a tiny red dot against the warm, burgundy night. Watches it join the stars, the real ones and its mechanical cousins, flaring briefly from time to time, to let everyone know there was still life there. Still miles and miles to go.

 

_All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance._

 

He stays until he loses track of where the plane is. Then he starts to head back inside.


End file.
